ICAR sponsored Winter School on AMR concludes at ICAR-CIFT

Rampant and indiscriminate use of antibiotics in both animal and human health has increased in recent decades that allow the bacteria to become resistance. The subsequent transmission and spread of resistant pathogenic bacteria sets the scene for development of drug-resistant infections (DRIs), expressed by the Chief Guest Dr. A. Gopalakrishnan, Director, CMFRI in the valediction programme of ICAR sponsored 21 days Winter School on “Antimicrobial Resistance in fish and aquatic environment and its impact on human health” organised by ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries technology concluded on 21St December 2017. He also said even the fish meal and marine sediments are not free from antibiotic residues, hence both AMU (antibiotic usage) and AMR (Antimicrobial resistance) are equally important for better understanding and solving these problems.
Dr. C.N. Ravishankar, Director CIFT in his presidential address told that CIFT is the forerunner in frontier research areas such as AMR and seafood safety and at the same time it shares that knowledge in the form of imparting training, conducting workshops. Further, he added that the need of the hour is inter-institutional collaborative research to find lasting solutions to the problems of AMR before it leads to a catastrophic consequence not only in aquatic environment but also in public health sector.
The valedictory program started with welcome address by Dr. M.M. Prasad, Course Director of Winter School and Head of Division of Microbiology, Fermentation and Biotechnology, in which he presented a brief report on the Winter School that included xenogeneic pollution to interest generated among participants to take the knowledge gained to the next level of implementation in the form of research projects. In his felicitation address Dr. A.K. Mohanty, Principal Scientist and Head of Extension, Information and Statistics stressed on learning new techniques and advances in the field not only useful for the advancement of the career but also taking the science at par with advanced countries. The Chief Guest Dr. A. Gopalakrishnan Director, CMFRI distributed certificates to all the participants. Feedback from the participants was exceptionally good. The program came to an end with vote of thanks from Dr. Toms Joseph Principal Scientist. The other course coordinators were Dr G.K. Sivaraman, Principal Scientist and V. Murugadas, Scientist of MFB Division of CIFT.